Indianapolis Times, Volume 38, Number 284, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 March 1927 — Page 14

PAGE 14

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SYNOPSIS JOHN DARING disapproves of wife’s working at night and Tving her daughter, JOYCE DURING, without maternal guidance. His disapproval of the party dress his wife has made for Joy drives the girl to go to a dance by way of the fire escape. She has an exciting time with three suitors. DAVID, TOMPKINS, her father’s favorite, HENRY DEACON, favored by her mother for his wealth, and “BUTCH” SELTZER, a rough admirer. She returns from the dance to find her parents' have decided to separate and she must choose between them. CHAPTER IV. HOLLOW GROUND "Sit down, Joy,” said Agnes Daring, an understanding kindness in her tone. John Daring pulled his big chair out for the girl who half tottered into it. The man and woman looked at her bowed head. On her, their child, their judge and jury, fell, the brunt of this disaster. Neither could help her, until she gave the signal that would Indicate which one of them had failed the least in duty to her youth. Joyce lifted her head. "Dads,” she said brokenly, holding out a hand to him. “Dads, dear Dads, it isn’t true what you said a moment ago, is it —that you, that you and Mother dear are, are going to get—” she faltered before the deadly word, —“a separation.” John Daring set his face grimly. He must see this fight through. With all his heart he believed that the moment had arrived for them all to set their feet on new paths. "Let your mother speak first lass,” he said kindly enough, though he made no motion toward taking the hand outstretched to him. "Yes, Joyce. Hear the truth. I’m not afraid of your decision. I know what it will be when you know what you must have suspected for a long time.” Agnes Daring stepped closer to her daughter, then turned her gaze to confront her husband. Joyce looked at her mother leveleyed.. All the evening, the happy evening vanished into a past too far away to be remembered. Somehow she felt herself growing older. Tonight her girlhood would die, die and be buried along with the love she knew her father and mother must once have had for each other. Now her mother’s voice recalled her. She listened with every fibre of her being. "When your father and I were married, twenty years ago,” said Agnes Daring, "I loved him with all my heart, but he was like his Scotch mother, reserved, cold, afraid to show me any love, such as my nature craved. "We had been married less than a year when he came to think of me only as someone to keep his house, mend his clothes, save his money. Scarcely a kind word I had from him from one day’s end to the other —scarcely a kind one, and never a loving one. "Then you came to us. At last I had someone to love. All my life 1 had starved for love, and now you were here to let me hold you and kiss your baby face, and make over you as I had a right to expect my husband to cherish me. "But even this I was denied. *You spoiled her,’ your father would say. And I had to wait until he had gone to his work to show you how I adored you. But no one could resist you. You crept into even his cold heart until I was amazed at his softness with you. Nights he walked ‘ the floor with you. Your slightest Whim was his law. "All this while you were a baby. Then you grew older and more wilful. You will never know—Unless you marry this cold Scotch Davey of his —how many cruel whippings I saved you from, how many little lies I told to save you from his anger, for he heeded the old teaching of his mother, ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ Then as you grew still older and started to school we had not enough money to dress you as the other girls were dressed. "I sewed and worked in the house and did all I could to make you fine. But he was as stingy with his money as with his love, and it was all 1 could do to keep you looking decent. "Then when the war came and evervciie who wanted it could have a job, I went to work. At first your father was pleased. He liked the thought of £xtra money. You were In school all day. I packed your lunch and his in the morning before I left and we saw ahead of us some chance of owning our home, of giving you the education we both wanted you to have. “But I soon found that he expected me not only to keep the house going, the cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, mending, but that he wanted me to give him a large part Os the money I earned. I wanted it for you, for the pretty clothes, the nice furniture, the things other girls had. “Then the war ended and men came back to their jobs. I lost my daytime job and for a month struggled on in the old way. But I began to want some pretty things for myself. Your father thought cotton stockings, one silk dress in three years, the old fashions of his mother, good enough for me. 1 saw you growißjfc Üb. young, pretty, and I longed to look more like your sister, your friend, your chum, less like your old, worn out mother. “So I took the night job in the restaurant. Every pretty thing you’ve had I’ve paid for. Every good time you’ve had, I’ve fought for. And now, when you are ready to leave school and to live your life he wants to stifle every good time that is ahead of you. "No pretty dresses, no beaux, no

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dances, no parties, just getting married to that slow Tompkins boy and living my life all over again. I won’t have it, Joyce. Or if it must be, I won’t stay to see it. You can stay with your father if you choose. But I am leaving and I want you to come with me.” She held out her arms to the girl. Her voice had risen in passion as she finished her story, and now exhausted by the scene, by her long day of 'work, she sank into a chair, her eyes yearning over her daughter. “Hear me, Lass,” said John Daring in a’ deep voice. “Hear me before you take the step that will make your whole life or ruin it. Your mother is right when she says I am cold and slow by nature. She knew that when we were married. But she is wrong if she thinks or says I do not love her, and love you. I could not be always saying it, and she will not believe it when I tell you that I loved her so I was jealous of the love she poured out on you. “But I loved you in spite of that and if I was harsh it was, because I believed it was for you. Never a blow did you get that did not strike into my heart, too. “But when you grew older and the war came along she wanted to work. I hated it, but all around us women were helping to carry the country’s burden, taking the places of the men who were gone, and so I gave my consent. It was an evil day when I did. For it changed your mother from a loving homebody into a gadabout. Silk stockings, powder for her face, ideas too young for any woman her age got into her head and she went crazy about them. "True she spent money on you. But the most of it she spent on herself. Then when the war was over and she came home for a bit, I thought we would be all right again. But she had the fever. And in a month she was back at work, this time at the job that has kept you and me from having a home through all your high school days. “I ask you what kind of home we have. I must get my own breakfast, or you must rise to help me, because your mother is sleeping. I must pack a bucket for myself for noon, and when I come b|aek at fivethirty your mother is gone to the restaurant. Night after night I am so tired that I must go to bed before ' she comes home, and leave the next morning without speaking to her. “Many a week we go from one Sunday morn to the other without saying a word to each other. I have no home. My daughter has no mother. No woman to hear ber prattle of friends, or the confidences every girl needs a mother to hear. Is It any wonder that I would rather see you married to David Tompkins, someone who would care for you, spend his evenings wth you, give you a home like this. “But no. Your mother would have you chasing a rich man’s son. To your ruin. Take your choice, girl. With your mother are the bright lights, the path of the moths that are burned and die. With me, for I’ll not lie to you, you’ll know the quiet life of a decent girl making ready to marry and have a homo. Ye’ll have to choose. For your mother and me have come to the parting of the ways.” The muscles of the girl’s face twitched. He laid his great toil worn hand for a moment on Joyce’s head. Joyce looked at these two through strange eyes. Her father and mother —Dads and Motherdear—whom she had loved; who had loved each other as married people did she had believed; who had made her home, her bulwark against the world. They were going! Away from each other! No home left! No solid ground beneath her feet in this bewildering world of young 1 fe that lay ahead of her! Slowly she rose to her feet. In her right hand she took her mother’s cold fingers, in her left she clasped her father’s hand. “Dads and Motherdear,” she said, “It is my fault that you have quarreled so tonight. I should never have angered Father so by running away This would never have happened if I had stayed at home. But I can’t stay home all my life. I must find things out for myself. “But while I’m finding them out I need you both. I need my home. And you, Dads dear, need mother. Motherdear, you need Dads. O, tell me this is all a bad dream. Let’s forget all that has been said. Let’s be just the happy three we’ve been for so long.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. She made an attempt to draw her father and mother closer together. There w r as a pause. Agnes Daring hung her head. John Dar ng moved his lips in prayer. Joyce sobbed quietly. The father spoke. "It is a terrible thing, oh God,” he said “to destroy a home. If your mother will give up her work and make a home as a woman should then I will forget what has passed.” Joyce looked questioningly at her mother. But Agnes Daring gave no sign. At last she pulled her hand away from Joyce’s. Her anger had vanished. Her voice held an infin te sadness. “It’s too late, John,” she said. “If you asked me because you loved me still I might try it. But without love life as we would have to live it would be impossible. I cannot do without the little fine things of that my work g ves me. Nor have you any right to ask Joyce to live her life as I have lived mine witlioul the chance to make a choice. She must have the opportunity to choose between a life of drudgery and a life of' ease. Her beauty will bring her both chances. I am younger now than I was ten years ago, younger in looks, younger in spirit. While you—you were born old. "Let Joyce spend her youth In the shadow of your coldness and your age. I cannot stand it. If Joyce chooses to come with me I will i promise you that so far as I can I j will be a good mother to her, wili | try to have her profit by my experience, ’'dll try to come closer to her

life than I have these past years. I am sorry for all the unhappiness that I have brought to you for I.have never had one moment of unfaithfulness to you, John Daring. And I still love you though you will not believe this.” “You see, Joyce,” said John Daring bitterly, “It is only of herself she thinks. Not your need, nor my need, but her need. There’s no hope, Lass. Ye canna have both your father and your mother.” Joyce felt suddenly remote, older. A thousand ypars older. “I see,” she said quietly. “But I cannot choose tonight. You must give me time, both of you. I will tell you in the morning.” In her room she went through the motions of making ready for bed. She brushed her hair, carefully, slowly, as Motherdear had taught

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her. She washed her face carefully and patted rosewater and glycerine into her hands. Then she sat down on her bed to think. Her coat lay across the foot of it. Stepping to the closet to hang it up something hard bumped against her arm. The vanity case! She took it out and looked at it fondly. The most beautiful thing she had ever had. Dads would make her give it back. Motherdear would say, “Take all you can.” Which was right? Was there no middle ground? Ground —she, Joyce Daring, had no ground to stand on. A volcano of twenty years repression and unhappiness shot it all from beneath her feet. Well, she would go with Motherdear. All the good times she wanted. !he would go to work of course.

Then Dad’s dear tired face. His lonely evenings. The hours he had spent reading to her. trying to fill her mind with good solid food, helping her until she was one of the brightest students in her class. “There’s one pretty girl who has Drains too,” one of her professors had said. Life with Dads would be safe. Work in the daytime. Davey and the movies in the evening. A home of her own in time. Children. Surely a broader life than her mother had lived for Davey. Well, somehow she knew that Davey would show his love for her. She thought of the time not long ago when Davey had kissed her suddenly when she had made a saucy face at him. Oh, yes, Davey was not an iceberg. Os course he had said he was sorry afterward. But Joyce knew he had not been either It had been a thrilling experience. More thrilling than anything that had ever happened to her except, yes even more thrilling than the fight between Butch and Deke. But suppose Deke were to kiss her, or even Butch. Would that be thrilling too! How silly of her to be thinking of these things. She had to decide what she was going to do. Dads or Motherdear? It wasn’t fair. She loved them both. And how could she face this new world opening before her, the daughter of a divorced home?

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Suddenly a flippant bitterness came over her. What right had they to force her to a choice? Why should she pay for their old mistakes? She dug into the pocket of her coat. Her last nlckle. She had the coin in the palm of her hand. Then she spoke aloud. “Heads it’s Motherdear. Tails It’s Dads.” With a half sob she flung the 6cent piece into the air. There was a metallic sound. The coin struck against the foot of the bed, wavered a moment, then disappeared between the legs of the bed and the wall, wedged out of sight, upright on its rim. Joy’s eager look faded. Fate refused to make the choice for her. Very well! She flung her head back. She would accept the challenge. Weariness overcame her. She drooped against the pillow and buried her face. The morning would bring counsel. She could not decide tonight. TOMORROW’S: Two estranged parents plead, each for the love of an only child, so justly they confuse her. Read tomorrow how Joyce Daring meets the crisis that threatens to make her homeless. In “JOY” the love story of an American girl. Copyright, 1926, Famous Features Syndicate, Inc.

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